Pocono retailers beating each other up to get to shoppers first

As Black Friday bleeds further into Thanksgiving, Rob Woods has reason to be concerned. Not for the moral reasons of what it does to family dinners, or the degradation of the holiday.

MICHAEL SADOWSKI

As Black Friday bleeds further into Thanksgiving, Rob Woods has reason to be concerned.

Not for the moral reasons of what it does to family dinners, or the degradation of the holiday.

It's strictly business for Woods, director of marketing at blackfriday.com, one of the leading Black Friday websites on the Internet.

If Black Friday completely disappears, his website might, too.

"It's a little bit worrying," he said, laughing. "It's going to be really interesting to see how people respond to the earlier hours this year."

Black Friday has been a post-Thanksgiving tradition for decades, but this year, it's an actual Thanksgiving tradition.

Many of the big-box retail stores that have helped make Black Friday what it is are now opening just as the final dish is being cleared from the table.

Wal-Mart, Sears and Kmart lead the way, opening at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving.

Target opens at 9 p.m., and many stores in The Crossings Premium Outlets in Tannersville open at 9 p.m.

Best Buy, Bon-Ton, Kohl's and many stores at Stroud Mall open at midnight.

Woods said his site's Facebook page has been flooded with comments from annoyed consumers that Black Friday is starting too early.

"This year is really extreme," Woods said of the opening times. "You're really forcing people to choose whether they'll do Thanksgiving dinner or whether they'll go shopping. Thanksgiving is a special holiday, but for many people, Black Friday is a special event as well, and some people don't want to give that up."

Complaints aren't limited to consumers.

Retail employees are filing online petitions protesting the early openings, and employee group Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart is asking on its website for Wal-Mart employees to sign a pledge not to work Black Friday.

Bill Epstein, director of communications for the regional office of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, said his group is planning a protest at the East Stroudsburg Wal-Mart store from 8 to 10 a.m. Friday.

Joe Skorupa, editor-in-chief at Retail Info System News, a retail technology media company based in Randolph, N.J., said sales figures during the Christmas season — and Black Friday — are too important to stores to see any let-up in the buying power around it.

Sales from that five-week stretch account for about a quarter of all retails sales each year, he said.

Black Friday competition started to heat up with discounts, but now it's who will get customers into their stores first.

Sanjeev Jain, founder of theblackfriday.com, said the thought is that if you get the customer into your store first, you get to reap the rewards.

"After spending time, effort and money at the first store, the customer may not be motivated to go to other stores, and they may have spent their budget money," Jain said. "Or they are just too tired to go to another place. Stores do not want to be the second, third or later choice of the consumer."

And if the early hours make you angry, it's not as if stores did this on a whim.

It was only a few years ago that one or two stores offered early-morning deals on Black Friday.

Now, it's almost required because shoppers kept showing up.

"It wouldn't shock me if stores started staying open all day on Thanksgiving," said Jesse Tron, spokesman for New York city-based International Council of Shopping Centers.

"This is from consumer demand. The consumer has showed they've wanted it. There certainly are going to be people who stay away, but those people probably already stay away. When the consumers ask for it, stores are going to find a way to give it to them."